In message <20060220173804.GA10142@panix.com>, Thor Lancelot Simon writes:
>On Mon, Feb 20, 2006 at 12:34:22PM -0500, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
>>
>> You're right that it needs to be possible to build static kernels.  I'd 
>> love a framework where the identical .o could be used either way. 
>
>As someone who used to rely pretty heavily on static Linux kernels to
>preserve his sanity while debugging, I'd like to say that if we're going
>to do it the Linux way, I *really* would not love such a framework.
>
>Linux implements symbol versioning on all symbols in a kernel with loadable
>module support by mangling their names in a way that makes it _extremely_
>difficult to see what's going on with the debugger, or with normal tools
>for looking at object files.  It would be nice to not make that mistake,
>which can also make it very difficult to see why the kernel fails to link
>at build time, if it does.

So let's do it properly....

		--Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb